United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

The United Nations Children’s Fund is active in more than 190 countries and territories through country programmes and National Committees. UNICEF upholds the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

UNICEF is stepping up its involvement to ensure climate change will not further infringe on children’s rights. As part of that, it is expected that promoting innovative sustainable energy solutions for children, is expected to become one of the priority areas. Already, UNICEF is increasingly applying sustainable energy solutions in its Country Office Programmes of Cooperation, and is in the process of exploring possibilities to scale up its involvement and investments in this area.

Children, mothers, energy, climate change and equity are inextricably linked. In fact, energy plays a key role in children and mothers’ development and well-being. For example, children need energy at home to do homework after dark, at health centers to get proper treatment, including at night time, and for transportation to school. Mothers need energy for maternal health care, for cooking meals and boiling water, and also for income-generating activities. In many places, children and mothers’ energy needs are simply not met, or they depend on unsustainable energy resulting in for example household air pollution from which 534,000 children under five die annually.

Some examples of UNICEF’s current work on sustainable energy are the following:

• Improved cook stoves in Bangladesh: This carbon offset initiative started in early 2014 and is a joint initiative of the UK Committee for UNICEF and the UNICEF Bangladesh Country Office (CO), with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH as the main implementing partner. Set up for a period of ten years, the initiative brings together businesses and the international development sector, through the purchasing of carbon credits, with Marks & Spencer (M&S) as the first major company participating in this new “financing for development” scheme.

Over the course of its lifespan, the initiative will provide 40,000 low-income households in Bangladesh with improved cookstoves that are technologically similar to and which uses the same fuel as the traditional ones used in the country, but which are much more efficient. These improved stoves need only half the amount of fuel as traditional stoves and have chimneys. As a result, they produce one ton less of carbon per year than a traditional stove, and reduce the amount of toxic smoke and particulates in homes. Community entrepreneurs are being trained in how to make the stoves from locally available materials, then sell them at a subsidized affordable rate, and provide maintenance and user support. Cooperation with local and international universities is being established to bring forward the research on indoor air pollution in Bangladesh and the effectiveness of improved stoves, respectively.

• Project Lumière in Burundi: Project Lumière started in mid-2013. Through collaboration between stakeholders including UNICEF, the private sector partner Nuru Energy, the local NGO FVS, community volunteers, the University of Brussels and local academic institutions, the project aims at strengthening services for children at the community level and help deliver sustainable energy solutions.
Over the course of the pilot phase, 16 community groups from three different provinces with varied geographic and economic profiles will participate in the project. These community groups purchase a PowerCycle (pedal-powered generator) and rechargeable LED lights to be sold within their communities. Each group, comprised of up to 45 members, makes an initial payment towards the purchase of the generator, and pays down the balance over a fixed period of time through revenue generated from the sale and recharge of the LED lights. In parallel, UNICEF works closely with the local NGO, which serves as micro-finance partner, to support the development of a community-owned social enterprise to oversee management, procurement and distribution of additional lights and other affordable off-grid energy solutions.

• ‘Youth Kiosks‘ and ‘MobiStations‘ in Uganda: UNICEF Uganda’s Innovation Lab has developed two key products which run on sustainable energy together with local experts.

Youth Kiosks are robust computers, powered through solar energy, usually consisting of a set of three low-energy laptops which are mounted in a metal housing to a wall. They are loaded with a great variety of educational material, including Uganda’s national school curriculum in video format. Currently, 37 of these mobile school labs are placed in youth centres in poor rural and urban settings. Installing the Youth Kiosks in public spaces is particularly important in providing access to information and education to those children that have dropped out or never attended school in the first place. In addition to the educational information children receive through operating the Kiosks, they acquire basic computer literacy as a practical skill that can be of great advantage in their future work-life.

MobiStations are the digital version of the ‘school-in-a-box‘ that has been provided by UNICEF as a hallmark disaster response for the last twenty years. These portable technology platforms can be powered through solar energy, generator, or grid. They include a laptop, micro projector, multiple camera devices, speakers, and batteries. MobiStations feature multiple USB ports, extended battery life, optional solar panels, and can function as content servers and wireless hotspots. They are pre-loaded with free quality educational content and can be used for a variety of contexts such as education and trainings in schools, universities, the health sector, andalso in emergency settings. In the latter, MobiStations are usually combined with UNICEF’s Rapid Family Tracing and Reunification (RapidFTR) software with the objective to support reuniting disconnected families in these settings.

In 2015, UNICEF launched a paper on “Why sustainable energy matters to children: The critical importance of sustainable energy for children and future generations” The paper aims to inform governments and development partners on children and mothers’ distinct energy needs and the state of the art in meeting these sustainably. It identifies specific barriers that hamper children and mothers’ access to sustainable energy and provides targeted policy recommendations.